Would not time fail to tell of all the types and prophecies of the earth's blessing in the days of the kingdom? The trees and the fields and the floods, in their order, will then rejoice before the Lord. The creation itself shall be delivered into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. Psalm viii., with many a kindred voice, proclaims it. The voice of every creature on earth, under the earth, and in the sea, heard in vision by the prophet, anticipates it. Rev. v. And the promised day, when "the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose," when "the leopard shall lie down with the kid," and when "the heavens shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn and the wine and the oil," will realize it. Isaiah xxxv.; Hosea ii.
And the nations, we know, will fill their place in this approaching system of glory. They will turn their swords into ploughshares; and instead of learning war, they will learn the ways of the Lord, and walk in His paths. At the appointed season they will wait, each with his offering, on the King in Zion, holding their high and joyous feast in the presence of His greatness there. Then from the uttermost parts of the earth shall be heard songs to the Righteous One. And then shall the call of the prophet be answered by the willing hearts of all the people: "Sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit: let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord, and declare His praise in the islands."
Israel then shall dwell safely-"every man under his vine and under his fig tree." They shall be "all righteous;" they shall be all united; they shall call every man his neighbour. "Ephraim shall not envy Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim." The two mystic sticks shall become one in the prophet's hand. They shall be "one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel." And, as in the shadowy days of Solomon, it shall then be said, "Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and making merry." Their merriment, too, shall be holy. It shall be the joy of a sanctuary. "They shall abundantly utter the memory of Thy great goodness, and shall sing of Thy righteousness… They shall speak of the glory of Thy kingdom, and talk of Thy power." Within themselves, towards the nations around, and under the God of their fathers, the God of their covenant, all shall be blessing with Israel. For thus saith the Lord God, They shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob My servant… I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And the heathen shall known that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when My sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore. Ezekiel xxxvii.
All this tells the tale of millennial joys on the earth. But in this system, of earthly glory, beyond the creationitself, the nations, and Israel, there is a spot still more illustrious, an object distinguished in the midst of even joys and dignities like these. I mean Jerusalem.
And I have before now asked myself, Why is it that Jerusalem is made so much of in Scripture? Why is it that "the Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob"?
It was His court-the place of His presence both as the God and the King of Israel. His palace and His sanctuary were there. The administrations of His laws and the ordinances of His worship were there. The thrones of judgment, the testimony of Israel, and the eucharistic service of His name, were all known there. Psalm cxxii. It was the place where Jehovah had recorded His name, and where the glory dwelt, the symbol of His presence.
It was His home. The whole land was the Lord's demesne; but Jerusalem was the mansion-house, the family dwelling. The children were placed out here and there through the tribes and divisions of the land, which was the family estate, but Jerusalem was the family mansion. It was the father's house, the common home, where, at stated holy days, the children met, according to the common way of the affection of kindred.
This, I believe, was Jerusalem's first attraction in the eye and to the heart of the Lord of Israel. He sought and He found a home at Jerusalem, saying, "This is My rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it." And He left it, when sin had defiled it, with all the hesitation and lingering which disappointed affection so well understands. Ezekiel viii. – xi.
Jerusalem was all this-the house of the Father, the palace of the King, and the temple of the God of Israel. For Israel were His children, His people, and His worshippers, and the affections of a Father's heart, and the joys and honours of the Lord and King, found their object and their sphere at Jerusalem. And this is more than enough to account to us for her high distinction. And all this is she to be again. It will be the palace, the temple, and the family mansion again. It will be the place of prayer for all nations. It will be the seat of legislation, worship, judgment, and government. It will be the fountain, too, of the virtues of the new covenant, from whence the living waters will flow, to make her, in those days, the mystic mother of the family. Psalm lxxxvii. And the glory of the heavens will shine on her from above, doing for her the service of sun and moon, while she is lifted up and exposed, that she may bask in the full light of it, and dwell under it as her native air. Isa. iv. 5; lx. 1; Zech. xiv. 10.
And she shall be the bride of the Lord of the earth, and the queen in the day of His power. He will clothe her with ornaments as such, rejoice over her, impart His name to her, and have her so honoured and cherished by the whole world, as to treat despite of her as indignity done to Himself. Psalm xlv.; Isaiah lx.; Jeremiah xxxiii.; Ezekiel xlviii.; Zeph. iii.
All this may well account for the place which Jerusalem holds in the thoughts of the Spirit. His prophets, those who spake as they were moved by Him, address her again and again as the bride, the queen, and the mother, in the days of the approaching glory. But what shall we say of Him, who has thus decked her with all beauty and dignity, and given her such relationship to Himself? Is it not wondrous and happy to see the circle of human sympathies thus seating itself in the divine mind? Is friendship only human? How can I say so, when I see Jesus and the disciple whom He loved walking in company? Are the affections of kindred merely human? How can I say so, when I think of Christ and the Church, and a thousand witnesses from Scripture? Is the heart's fond delight in home a divine as well as a human joy? How can I doubt it, when I thus see the Lord and Jerusalem? Surely the divine mind is the seat of all the pure and righteous sensibilities of the heart, and "the Man Christ Jesus" tells me so. The Lord God of Israel has known, and will know again, the affection that lingers round the homestead of many a family recollection and joy.
Such will be Jerusalem, and such the earth itself, the nations, and Israel, in the promised days of the presence and power of the Lord. Faintly traced by the hand, more feebly responded to by the heart. But "yet true," though "surpassing fable."
All Scripture, however, shows us that such joy cannot be had on earth, or in the circumstances and history of the world, in their present state, nor till the earth is made the scene of righteousness; and such it is not to be, till the Lord have ridded it of all that offends, and all that does iniquity. The sword of judgmentmust go before the throne of glory. The earth must be cleared of its corruptions, ere it can be a garden of holy, divine delights again.
The Gospel is not producing a happy world, or spreading out a garden of Eden. It proposes no such thing, but to take out of the world a people, a heavenly people, for Christ. But the presence of the Lord will make a happy world by-and-by, when that presence can righteously return to it.
The close of the Psalms shows us this. Beautiful close! All praise – untiring, satisfying fruit of lips uttering the joy of a filled heart, and owning the undivided glory of the Blessed One! But this had been preceded by the sorrows of the righteous in an evil world, and then the judgment of that world. For that Book gives the cries of the righteous in an evil world, the joys of the Spirit in the midst of that evil, the varied exercises of the soul by the way, and the end of the righteous in the joy of praise. All, however, forbids the heart from entertaining the thought of joy in theearth till the judgment have cleansed it; the rest is to be prepared for Solomon by the sword of David.
The proper thought of this will keep the heart from being tossed by disappointments, and take it off from the expectation of any progress to rest and stability for the world, or in it, till the Lord have executed judgment. Our joy now is to be in Himself, in spirit, in the thought of His love, and the sense of His peace, helped onward, day by day, in the hope of full and righteous joy with Him, when the wicked have gone from the scene for ever.
How sensitively does the Lord's mind recede from the thought of joy in the earth, when the people were wondering at all things that He did! Turning to His disciples He said, "Let these sayings sink down into your ears; for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men." But this, I may say, was only a sample of all His mind, as He looked to the earth in its present condition. It was ever in His thoughts connected with trial.
Psalm lxxv. strikingly utters this. There Messiah looks on the earth as all dissolved and disordered, about to drink the cup of judgment at God's righteous hand. For the present He expected nothing from it. But then, after the exhausting of that cup, He does look on it as the scene of joy and praise and exaltation of righteousness, He Himself bearing up its pillars, and leading its songs.
I feel it, however, to be a very solemn truth, that God is allowing man, giving him space and time, to ripen his iniquity, that the judgment may fall upon him in the height of his pride, and crush the system which he is raising in its point of greatest pretension and advancement. It is surely a solemn truth. But even in such a purpose, as in all others, "Wisdom is justified of all her children." The believer may be awed by such a fact in the divine dealings with man, but he approves it, understands it to be a fitting thing, that man should be allowed to produce the fully ripened fruit of his own departure from God, to present it and survey it in the pride of his heart, and then receive his righteous answer to all his boasted and enjoyed apostasy, from the signal judgment of God. The iniquity of the Amorites was to be full, ere justice should overtake it. The Lord bore with Babel till the cry of it went up to Him. Nebuchadnezzar had built "great Babylon," as he gloried, by the might of his power, and for the honour of his majesty, when he was driven from his high estate; Haman was full when God emptied him even to the dregs. And the great man of the earth, at the last, shall come to his end, just as he has planted the tabernacles of his palaces in the glorious holy mountain.
It is solemn; but it is as wisdom would have it, and as faith deeply approves it. God is justified in His sayings, and overcomes when He is judged.
Happy I desire to find this meditation. Where there is much conflict of thought and judgment among the saints, it is grateful to the soul to turn to subjects of common interest and delight; and when the scene around is getting full of man's inventions and man's importance, it is well, to look to those regions of light and purity, where God, supreme and all-sufficient, will gather together all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. Regions of light and purity indeed, where all will tell of intimacy or nearness, and yet of the full sense of the position of the Creator and the creature, the Sanctifier and the sanctified. In many a delightful page of God's Word is this brightly reflected. The Lord dwelt in the midst of the camp of Israel while at rest, and, as it took its journey, went along with it, whether by night or by day, whether the road lay right onward, or turned back to the mountain or the sea. But still He was God, the Lord of the camp.
How does all that commend itself to our souls! We bow to this. We rejoice to know that He dwells in a light that no man can approach unto, and yet that He has walked through the cities and villages of earth; that He is One whom no man hath seen, nor can see, and yet that none less than the One who is in His bosom has declared Him to us, been in the midst of us, our Kinsman in the flesh, as well as Jehovah's Fellow.
His supreme authority, as Lord, is infinite; His distance and holiness, as God, are infinite. And yet He is "Head over all things to the Church," and God Himself is "for us." At the very moment of His commanding Moses and Joshua to take their shoes from their feet, because of His presence, He was manifesting Himself to them in symbols or characters significant of the deepest sympathy, and of the most devoted service. Exodus iii; Joshua v.
But enough. I will not pursue these thoughts any further. Yet in the days of increasing gloom and perplexity, like the present, the soul is the more sent to the sure hiding-place of safety, or to the sunny Pisgah heights of hope and observation. It gets the more accustomed to meditate on the strength of those foundations which God has put under our feet-the intimacy of that communion into which He has even now introduced our hearts-and the brightness of those prospects which He has set before our eyes.
I only ask, beloved, Are we pressing, in desire, after this portion? Are we unsatisfied with all in comparison with it? Are we refusing to form any purpose, or to entertain any prospect, short of this? In Psalm lxxxiv. the heart of the worshipper is still on the way, unsatisfied, though he have "pools," and "rain," and "strength" of the Lord, till he reach Zion. In Psalm xc. all which the man of God sees is the vanity of human life and the "return" of the Lord. He does not anticipate changes and improvements in the condition of things, but looks to being "made glad" and of being "satisfied" at the "return" of Christ.
Is this our mind? I again ask. Are we still prisoners of hope, refusing to let anything change the expectant attitude of the soul? The Holy Ghost is given to us, not to change that, but to strengthen it. His very presence does but nourish present dissatisfaction of heart, and the longings of hope and desire. He causes the saint to "abound in hope," and gives breadth and compass to the cry, "Come, Lord Jesus." Spirit of truth, the other Comforter, as He is, He does not show Himself for the Bridegroom, nor propose to make His refreshings "the marriage supper of the Lamb." The energy of hope, the desirings of the soul after our still unmanifested Lord, only speak the Spirit's presence in us the more clearly and blessedly. It is His very design and workmanship. He draws us forth to hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
And is He, beloved, our object? The heart well knows the power of that which is its object. Do we make Jesus such? Do we find, in ourselves, anything of that sickness of hope of which we read in Scripture? And are we able to say, "When He giveth quietness, who then can make trouble?"
May the Spirit shed abroad more and more, in the heart of each of us, these and the like affections. And to Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, be glory and dominion for ever! Amen.
Bride of the Lamb! awake, awake!
Why sleep for sorrow now?
The hope of glory, Christ, is thine,
A child of glory thou.
Thy spirit through the lonely night,
From earthly joy apart,
Hath sigh'd for One that's far away,
The Bridegroom of thy heart.
But see, the night is waning fast,
The breaking morn is near,
And Jesus comes with voice of love,
Thy drooping heart to cheer.
He comes; for, oh, His yearning heart
No more can bear delay,
To scenes of full, unmingled joy
To call His Bride away.
This earth, the scene of all His woe,
A homeless wild to thee,
Full soon upon His heav'nly throne,
Its rightful King shall see.
Thou too shalt reign, He will not wear
His crown of joy alone,
And earth His royal Bride shall see
Beside Him on the throne.
Then weep no more, 'tis all thine own,
His crown, His joy divine,
And sweeter far than all beside,
He, He Himself is thine.